


This Body is Not As It Was Before

by kwinke



Series: Post-Cannon and All Is Well [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Coming Out, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Trans Character, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-07-04 16:39:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15845208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwinke/pseuds/kwinke
Summary: When a night of storytelling turns into a terrifying confession, Magnus and Taako are there to reassure Kravitz his worth.Takes place in the same world as A Bad Day, but they are both stand-alone stories as well :)





	This Body is Not As It Was Before

The three of them are hanging out in the living room one evening after dinner and it’s extremely domestic. There’s three half-eaten pieces of chocolate cake sitting around the coffee table, along with two glasses of wine and a bottle of cider. 

Taako is painting his toenails a lavender shade from the floor, occasionally pausing to take a sip of wine.  Magnus is widdling away at a chunk of wood from the recliner, collecting his strips of wood into a wooden container that he made a few months ago when the boys complained about always finding splinters in the living room. Kravitz had a book on the coffee table, which he had planned on reading before Taako (endearingly) persuaded him to “put that book down, Bones” and the three of them have been chatting and laughing. 

Maybe it was the full bellies, maybe it was the alcohol, but the three of them were giggling like children as they recounted stories from their respective childhoods. Magnus was finishing a story about how he came to realize that he was not in fact a cat person like his best friend at the time when he picked up her new kitten and he managed to claw his way across his shoulder and down his back.

“But Maggie, we _have_ two cats, how could you say you’re not a cat person?” Taako giggles as he caps his lavender nail polish and fishes around in a basket for a clear coat.

“Just because I’m not a cat person doesn’t mean I don’t like cats at all. I just prefer dogs. I like Panther and Princess just fine!” He defends.

The cats aren’t in the room with them now; they’re probably posted up in their bedroom, as Taako likes to call it. When he adopted Panther nearly a year ago, he also bought every cat tree, cat bed, and cat toy he could find and put them all in one of the larger bedrooms in the house because he claimed it had the best sunlight.  Of course, since then the rest of the house had become littered with more cat accessories than the boys would care to admit, but Panther and Princess seemed to like that they had a place all of their own where they could sleep all day long if they so choose.

“Whatever, I think you’re a cat person _and_ a dog person. Or maybe just a big lug who loves everything” Taako drawls. Magnus flicks a sliver of wood at him.  Taako raises his hand and magics it right back at Magnus before it can even manage to hit him. 

“UNFAIR” Magnus laughs, wide-eyed. 

“No, unfair is flicking things at me when I’m trying to do my art!” He responds, sticking his tongue out at Magnus.  “Alright, Bone-Daddy. Your turn for a story!”

“Oh, I don’t really know which story to tell” Kravitz smiles, watching Taako put the last coat of clear polish on a pinky toe.

  
“Tell Magnus about that one time you ate an ENTIRE chocolate cake before your parents came home!” Taako demands.

“WHAT! HOW! WHAT!”

 Kravitz chuckles and takes another sip of wine.

“Ahhh, yes. It was meant to be for my sister’s birthday party the next afternoon. My mother had just finished frosting it and left it out on the counter while her and Father took her shopping for her birthday presents.  She was turning ten so I must have been… fifteen? I just couldn’t resist, it smelled so good and it was so chocolatey. I meant to just take a bite, but then before I knew it I had eaten the whole thing!”   

“What did they do when they came home?!” Magnus was entranced, laughing full-bellied at the image of his perfectly polite and reserved boyfriend lacking enough self-control to not eat his sister’s birthday cake in its complete entirety.

"Well, I blamed it on a dog.  … that we didn’t have”  

Magnus howls in laughter, which is contagious to the two boys who start laughing along with him. 

“Where did you, how did you even eat an entire cake? You’re fucking cut like a model,” Magnus asks, trying to get a grip on his laughter as its aftershocks chuckle out of him.

“I mean, you know that this body is just a construct, right? I didn’t look like this in my life.  I was a lot… err… softer”

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love how sexy your construct is or whatever, but Taako is a sucker for soft boys” Taako reacts, waggling his eyebrows at Magnus who blushes up to his ears. “Hey, are you able to like, show us what you looked like? Like, can you do a switcheroo on this body? ‘Cuz now I’m curious, need to know for the full effect of the story kemosabe.”

Kravitz freezes.

“I don’t… err-“

“Hey, hey, it’s alright” Magnus sets his wooden box on the floor in front of the chair and creeps over to the couch next to Kravitz, sensing the sudden change of mood. “You don’t have to do anything, man. We don’t care”. 

“I just… don’t…”  
  
“Do you not remember? Because that’s fine too babe it’s been like a gajillion years,” Taako covers, also scooting closer to Kravitz.

 “No, no, I remember I just,“ he takes a deep, steadying breath. “I didn’t really like… how I looked back then. So I changed it”.

 The two boys nod, both with their eyes trained on Kravitz as he takes a long sip of his wine and sets it on the table. He flattens his palms against his trousers, staring ahead of him.

“Babe,” Taako begins softly, and Kravitz moves his eyes to him. “You are an incredibly sexy man.  And I would say that if you had a tail, or if your skin was purple, or if you had scales, or whatever.  I love you.  I love how sensitive and kind you are, how well you treat me and Maggie and the kitties. Looks don’t mean a thing to ol’ Taako. You’re our boyfriend and we love you no matter what.”

Kravitz feels the words bubbling into his chest, but he swallows them down with the lump in his throat. Magnus puts a hand on Kravitz’ thigh, and he takes another deep breath before intertwining his fingers with the fighter’s. 

He begins slowly, body trembling.

“I… I didn’t have a tail or scales. I was a human. I just wasn’t…” _Why is this so hard to say out loud_ “In my life, I mean, I wasn’t… a boy”.

Taako’s expression softens and he reaches out to Kravitz immediately.

“Oh, baby, that doesn’t matter to us” he affirms, and Kravitz feels a sob threaten to fall out of his throat. Magnus wraps his arms around him as if to keep his shaking body still and Taako climbs up next to him.  Suddenly there are hands soothing his hair and rubbing circles into his back and squeezing his fingers tightly and he inhales the scent of _Magnus_ and he starts crying. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to lie to you guys for so long, I just didn’t- I didn’t know-“

“Kravitz, you never lied to us. You identify as a boy and that’s all that matters” Magnus whispers into his ear and that makes Kravitz cry harder.

“You don’t have to- to- to be so nice about- about- it” he hiccups and Magnus _shh_ ’s him through his hair. He kisses his temple, his ear, any piece of skin he can get to. Taako presses his body tight into Kravitz from behind, clutching at whatever pieces of Kravitz he can.

They sit like that for a while, squeezing Death while sobs wrack his body until finally, _finally_ he calms down enough to pull apart. Taako uses Mage Hand to bring a box of tissues and a waste basket can in from the kitchen and then hands a few to Kravitz who wipes at the tears and snot around his face. He feels emotionally exhausted, completely gut wretched. His boys watch him sadly while he tries to re-gain his composure enough to speak.

He doesn’t know how to ask the question, doesn’t want to have to ask the question, doesn’t want to know the answer. He’s heard it before.  Of course it changes things. He lied to them, and he’s not who they thought he was.

Magnus continues to rub circles into his back while he struggles to regulate his breathing. He needs to know; he needs to ask them what they’re thinking. He looks at Taako and hopes his facial expression does it for him.

It does.

“Oh, bubelah, you know that this doesn’t change anything for us, right?” Taako whispers, eyes filled with deep sincerity.

Kravitz starts crying again, this time quietly. Taako reaches out and squeezes his hand, the one clutching a used tissue in his lap.

“I can’t imagine what it must have been like for you to go through that when you were alive. I watched Lup do it at a time much more progressive than yours and it was still impossibly hard.  And we’re elves and you know that gender ain’t really a thing in our culture anyway. Kravvy, I am so sorry that you had to go through that.”

“It’s okay” he whispers. It’s a reflex, really. 

“No, it’s not okay. This is obviously not okay or else I wouldn’t be holding your snotty tissues and I’m so sorry that you went through that” Taako argues and Kravitz lets his eyes fall shut.

He’s right, he knows that he’s right. He’s kept that hurt bottled in for centuries, for millennia, trying to hold up a masque of who he wanted to be and never thinking back to who he was, to why he even had to become a Reaper in the first place, to why The Raven Queen felt so compelled to keep him and to employ him even though he should’ve been put into the Astral Plane from the start.

There’s a lot of hurt still trapped, still so precious that he’s afraid to ever recount the stories, even to the two men holding him through his episode of sadness.  He doesn’t know if he would ever be able to really open up about his experiences, about the fear and the uncertainty and the self-loathing. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to tell them how he died, how he came to be under the power of The Raven Queen.

“Kravitz, I love you,” Magnus whispers and Kravitz turns to look at him through teary eyes. Magnus leans in and kisses him softly, sincerely, trying to channel through his lips how much he means to him. His fingers come up and frame his cheeks, brushing away the tears that are still falling.  When the message finally feels transmitted, he releases Kravitz and gently guides his gaze to Taako, who seems to have been watching them share their moment.  Taako leans in and brushes his lips against Kravitz, breathing a promise into their shared kiss as well.

When Kravitz opens his eyes again, Magnus is crying a little bit and Taako still looks like he wants to wrap Kravitz up into his arms.  He sighs and lets a small smile wear into his lips.

“Would you two be so kind as to accompany me to our bedroom?” He asks quietly. Magnus smiles reassuringly, and Taako jumps up.

 

“Hell yeah – let’s get our fucking cuddle on, my dudes!”

**Author's Note:**

> Whoops, I did it again.
> 
> Feel free to leave constructive criticism / comments!


End file.
